IEEE ASU ComSoc Keynote Speech Series
The IEEE ASU ComSoc Student Branch Chapter is dedicated to fostering an active community of students and researchers passionate about communications, networking, and emerging wireless technologies. Our mission is to create a dynamic environment for professional development, mentorship, and technical exchange. As a core part of this mission, we host a Keynote Speech Series featuring distinguished leaders whose work informs and inspires our members. These sessions are designed to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and industry practice, providing our student community with direct access to the visionaries shaping the future of connectivity.
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Speakers
Gunes Karabulut-Kurt of Polytechnique Montréal
Towards Secure and Sustainable Non-Terrestrial Networks to Bridge Earth and Space
Emerging satellite networks, in the form of megaconstellations, are poised to deliver significant advances in eliminating the digital divide, especially with the deployment of direct-to-cell connections at scale. However, deploying such networks remains challenging, requiring innovation in architecture, interoperability, and security. This keynote will provide an accessible overview of the development of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), emphasizing how they can be seamlessly integrated with terrestrial systems through approaches such as Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN). The discussion will explore how resource allocation can be configured to ensure efficient operation in heterogeneous networks, while addressing the pressing issues of resilience and security in a highly interconnected space-terrestrial ecosystem. The talk will conclude by highlighting open research directions and long-term opportunities, pointing to how NTNs can evolve into secure, intelligent, and sustainable infrastructures that support inclusive global connectivity.
Biography:
Gunes Karabulut-Kurt is a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in New Frontiers in Space Communications and a Professor at Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada. She is the Director of the Poly-Grames Research Center, and is co-founder and Director of Education and Training of ASTROLITH, Transdisciplinary Research Unit of Space Resource and Infrastructure Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. She is also an adjunct research professor at Carleton University, Canada. Gunes received the B.S. degree with high honors in electronics and electrical engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkiye, in 2000 and the M.A.Sc. and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. She worked in different technology companies in Canada and Turkiye between 2005 and 2010. From 2010 to 2021, she was a professor at Istanbul Technical University. Gunes is a Marie Curie Fellow and has received the Turkish Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist (TÜBA-GEBIP) Award in 2019.
